


Ham or Eggs.  1/1.

by punky_96



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 23:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10774629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punky_96/pseuds/punky_96
Summary: Drawing on the much older "Ham or Eggs" speech from George when he was first with Callie.  But taking that and letting Addison use the idea when talking to Callie about Erica.  This is about the fallout from Callie learning the 'Sloan Method.'(I am transferring fics over as they were originally posted. If you did not like the fic in the first place, then do not waste your time re-reading it.)





	Ham or Eggs.  1/1.

_**Ham or Eggs** _

 

  
    Panic attack.  I’ve heard of them, but really only thought I was coming close to one during the George Administration of my life.  How did I ever get so hooked on him anyway?  Yeah, yeah—Heart in the Elevator Guy.  Now my heart is racing, I feel like I’m underwater, all I want to do is make it all stop.  My body hurts, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep.  I can’t bear to be around people and being alone is genuinely terrifying.  
  
    I really, really can’t breathe.  
  
    I did this.  I did this to Erica.  I was going around and around the drain looking at my fears and I had to knock it off.  I had to stop being so pathetic and face her, face me, face my fears.  I lash out.  I was once called `Cage Fighter Callie’ by Izzie Stevens.  I break bones, I drink tequila, I hit darts hard, and I don’t back down.  I’ve been broken and I’m not going to be again.  Yet here I am not breathing with my heart beating so loudly in my ears that there must be an impending medical trauma waiting to happen to me.  Is there such a thing as an aneurysm in the ear canal?  Maybe a dual ear canal aneurysm?  Not a brain aneurysm, I’m a neuro case, but not for that.  
  
    I take dares.  I risk everything.  I rush into relationships because I am thrilled by them and welcome the pain when they end.  I feel like I have truly lived because I put myself out there.  Maybe I should have been a fire fighter or a police officer—putting myself on the line in life or death situations.  I can’t explain it.  I just choose to do things when the time is right and sometimes caution has to run to catch up and remind me, that I should breathe a little and think a whole lot more.  
  
    Hmm.  There’s that breathing again.  And the chills are starting.  I can’t stay still and I can’t move.  It’s going to be a long, long night.  Yang isn’t home and I never turned on the lights or anything when I got home.  It was still light at the time and the shock hadn’t really set in.  
  
    It’s here now.  Taking my breath away like the smothering waves it feels like it’s coming in.  I’m kneeling on the floor facing the couch.  It’s almost like a praying position and part of me considers this an option.  Mostly I’m just trying to keep my upper body hugging the couch pillow and upright enough that I can breathe.  
  
    “Hello.”  I answer breathlessly.  
  
    “Callie?  Callie are you ok?”  Oh my god it’s Addison.  I should be happy, but I’m not.  I should want to talk because she’s the best person to talk to now, but how can I talk?  What I want to talk about has been destroyed anyway, by me.  And I should have talked to Erica or maybe even Addison, but I didn’t.  I didn’t talk to anyone except Sloan.  Sloan, he’s my guy, he’s my person now, second to Erica.  And now, well, he is my person, my only person.  And he’s Sloan, sex addict Man Whore Sloan.  Why wouldn’t I talk to him?  I choked during sex with Erica—I needed sex advice.  
  
    “Callie! What the hell?  You sound awful and you’re just sitting there breathing?  What happened to you?”  
  
    “Oh, Addison.”  I’m sobbing now, but I know that I’m breathing because the sobs are coming and going which have to be powered to some degree by air.  
  
    “Callie, what happened?  Sloan said to call you.  What the hell is going on?  I don’t hear from Sloan in forever, I mean not since I visited and it was weird when I left in the first place, and then he says to call you.  You, my super friend who wrote me off when I moved to LA. You who when I visited seemed to be dating your friend and then you did the sex walk with Sloan and I haven’t heard from you since then…  Callie?  Callie are you there?”  Normally I would have been bummed that she was prattling on and picking on me for being upset when she left, at this moment I was treasuring every rambling word that fell into my ear from those long miles to LA.  
  
    “Callie!  This is not a monologue. You have to talk to, you know?  Not just breathe into the phone.  I am glad that you answered at least.  Sloan wouldn’t say what the problem was, only that I should call you.  So I’m assuming the worst, but I don’t know what that could be and I was afraid you didn’t want to talk to me, cuz you haven’t talked to me…  Are you talking to me, because it’s starting to dawn on me that you aren’t talking?”  Oh, I don’t need anyone else to love, but I love Addison `Rambling’ Montgomery.  
  
    “Addison.”  I say softly and she falls silent mid-word.  
  
    “Oh, there you are.”  She says softly.  
  
    “Addison, I’m so awful.  I made a mess of everything.”  
  
    “So are you going to tell me about Erica?  I was right wasn’t I?”  She’s smiling now and I can see her with her raised eyebrow and chips that day she set all of this in motion.  I wish, wish, wish I could re-wind and do that conversation again.  
  
    “Addison.”  I choke out over the sobs that have started again.  
  
    “What happened?  Why did Sloan call me about you?  What are you doing?”  
  
    “I slept with Mark, Addie.”  I whisper.  It’s mostly accurate.  It would after all be considered a sex act and a betrayal, but that wasn’t what it was.  
  
    “I kind of guessed that Callie.  You did the sexy dance with him and then drug him out of Joe’s by the tie.”  
  
    “No, Addison.”  I sigh a big, huge, frustrated sigh.  It’s not Addison’s fault that she’s not current on the loop.  She doesn’t have tv cameras beaming in our every move to keep her current like Seattle Grace is the set of “Big Brother” or something.  “Uh.  Let me go back a little.”  I pause a little, “You were right, Addison.  You were right that Erica and I seemed like a couple.  But I freaked out when you asked me about it, because I seriously hadn’t figured it out.”  
  
    “Yeah the high pitched `I like penis, I’m a big fan of penis,’ wasn’t my first clue that you didn’t know and freaked out, Callie.”  She’s amused by my denial obviously.  
  
    “No, Addison.  You’re right and I fought against it and slept with Mark and…”  Oh, I have to explain about the three-some talk and the new leaf and the kiss in the elevator, and the kiss in front of Seattle Grace?  Why did I need to talk to her again?  Oh.  Yeah.  I’m getting there.  I start to feel the panic rise again just thinking about it.  “Ok. So I was avoiding Erica and my feelings as you suggested.  Somehow Mark and I get onto the topic of threesomes.”  
    “Oh, he was always trying to talk to me about those!  Wait!  Tell me you didn’t Callie. Tell me you didn’t have a threesome with him and Erica?”  Oh, she’s so disappointed in me.  Given the current reality I don’t know what kind of awful that would have been, but maybe it wouldn’t have been this awful.  
  
    “No.  No.  We started talking about it and I…  Well, it became a thing.  Then somehow when we were hanging out with Erica I brought it up and we were teasing about it.”  
  
    “Oooh.  Callie not good.  Were you raised by wolves?”  
  
    “I know, I know.  Believe me.  So the three of us end up in the elevator together.  And threesome comes up and she says that he couldn’t handle the two of us and then he challenges back, and then she kissed me.”  
  
    “Ooh.  I knew she’d be the one to make the first move.  You should have seen her at Joe’s that night when you left with Sloan, Callie.  She told me you were beautiful and she looked after you so intently.  Callie?”  
  
    “Wait, uh.  Wait.  I dropped the phone.”  I say as I look for it under the couch.  It’s too dark, but I do manage to find it.  I also decide to actually sit on the couch now that I seem to be breathing properly.  My heart breaks a little more to think of that night when I left with Sloan in front of Erica’s face knowing that there was a possibility of something, even if I wasn’t ready to deal with it.  I can only imagine the hurt in her eyes and her lips as she tried to not care more than a normal friend would.  “I.  I’m back.”  I say stupidly after I realize that I’m just breathing again.  
  
    “So, she kissed you.  Then what?”  
  
    “So there was a really big trauma, we called him cement boy because he was encased in cement.  We were all there working on him.  You should’ve seen it all, Addison.”  
  
    “Get to it, Callie.”  
  
    “So Mark and I have been talking about everything because of his new leaf and he can tell that I am confused about Erica.  He’s about as observant as you are, unless you told him!  I can’t believe it.  Did you tell him?”  
  
    “No, no, I didn’t Callie.  So what, what next?”  
  
    “We go to leave the hospital after cement boy’s surgeries and I proposition him again, but he’s tired of watching me torture myself I guess and he tells me to finish what I started the night before.  You know, the kiss with Erica in the elevator.  So I go to talk to her and suddenly can’t talk, so I kiss her in front of the hospital.”  I smile at that part, because I can’t help myself.  It lead to two weeks of awkward, but it was one of my best life moments.  “So she kisses me back, but then it was weird for a couple of weeks until I decided to do experimental surgery on a guy and nearly killed him and she came in to save the day.  So then we start dating.”  
  
    “Finally.”  I can hear her roll her eyes.  
  
    “Thanks. By the way.  Thanks for the most drama I’ve ever had in my entire life.  In fact thanks for turning me upside down and changing everything I ever thought I knew about myself!”  
  
    “Whoa, tiger.  Where’s this coming from?”  
  
    She’s right.  I have no right to be upset at the mess I’ve made of the knowledge she prompted me to open my eyes and see.  It’s not her fault that I was too blind and unable to talk at the right times.  But I’ve got to be mad at somebody else for a change.  
  
    “I’ve ruined it!”  I shout.  I am so angry at myself and the world and for not being able to deal with things properly.  
  
    “What happened?”  
  
    “The other night, we, well, we finally had sex.  We had been going slow and it was so nice, Addison, so nice.  It was like our old friendship, but so much better.”  I’m starting to whine.  It’s only been hours and I’m so desperately alone and wishing Erica was here.  “But we had sex and I, I choked, Addie.  I couldn’t do it, or I did it and it felt clinical.  It was like my gynecological moments of med school and stuff all back at me.  I left the next morning without even talking to her.”  
  
    “Ohhh.  No.  Callie.  You didn’t do that.”  
  
    “Yes.  Yes I did.  I tried to talk to Mark, but he was all depressed because Sheppard published his big clinical trial.  Erica invited me over that night and I flipped out.  I thought she would be unhappy with me too, and I needed time to freak out and there she was with her smile and blue eyes and she wanted to have dinner and a movie.  I couldn’t stand it I was so uncomfortable.  
  
    “I tried to talk to Sloan again, but he was taking his frustrations out on me.  He tried to make me feel like a disappointment because I was failing at the super hot girl on girl action that he’s been thinking about.  And then there’s Erica again in the x-ray room.  She’s got her hand on my back and she asks if I want to get coffee.  She’s so gentle and I snap.  I tell her that I can’t do this.”  I’m sobbing again to think of the look in Erica’s eyes when she said `It wasn’t good for you.’  I couldn’t say that it was good, but it didn’t dawn on me until she walked out the door and I suddenly leaned against the wall, that I realized that she thought I didn’t want her.  
  
    “Callie.  You freaked out.  I’m sure that you can talk to her.  She’s totally into you and I know that you can talk.  You’ve both struggled with this for so long.”  
  
    “No.  You don’t understand.  There’s more.”  And I leave off sobbing again.  “I realized that she thought I didn’t want her.  And I realized for sure that I did want her.  I realized that I was freaked out because I thought I sucked.  I realized that I needed to learn and I needed to fix this now.  I realized that the best sex I’d had to this point was Sloan.  I realized that I had been right to try to get him to talk earlier.  I realized that he could teach me.”  
  
    I didn’t stop in between words.  I didn’t stop to change my verb from realize.  I didn’t breathe until I’d said it all.  Then I tried to catch up to myself.  And I died all over again when Addison shouted, “You what?!  Callie did you go to Sloan after you had sex with Erica!  Oh my god.  What were you thinking?  What the hell?  Please tell me he had surgery and you finally had to talk to Erica!”  
  
    I can’t take it and I just roll off the couch and onto the floor sobbing.  “No.  No, Addison.  I asked him to teach me and then I went and found her and showed her that it wasn’t that I didn’t like her, but that I wanted to be the best for her.”  
  
    There’s silence.  Shocked silence.  She’s shocked by the telling of it.  I’m shocked by the realizations that came too late.  I could have done one million billion other things, but I chose to get sex tutoring from Sloan in order to show Erica that I wanted her.  Why didn’t my realizations continue on to the fact that I couldn’t have sex with anyone besides Erica, regardless of the intent?  Why didn’t my realizations continue on to the fact that she’s amazing and she was amazing and that we’d figure it out because there isn’t a shortage of materials about sex?  Why didn’t I realize that I am the cage fighter and I’m a sexual being and that I could handle this I just needed a moment to step out, analyze the situation, and step back into the ring?  
  
    It’s still silent.  
  
    “Addison?  Are you, are you still there?”  
  
    “Oh, Callie.  I’m so sorry that you…  Well, I’m trying to be your friend here, but wow.  You make it hard to say the right anything.  Oooh.”  She sighs now, but she didn’t hang up on me.  
  
    “It was fine.  I didn’t think of the ramifications.  I thought that I was learning what to do for her.  I thought that I’d already been with him and I don’t attach a lot of meaning to sex, and sex with Mark was just something to do, and in this case something to learn from…  I know it’s awful.  But I truly didn’t think of it.  Kind of like the first time you see an electric burner turned on an you reach to touch the orange color on the black metal and you get burned.  You know you should’ve known—stove, burner, cooks food, hot, will burn hand?  But you just think pretty orange color?  
  
    “It was great.  We were great.  Erica and I it was mind-blowing and we were like horny teenagers all over the hospital and her house and my house and Yang wants to kill me.  
  
    “And then Sloan had to make a comment that he thought no one would hear when we were in front of a supply room.  And we get to talking about how wonderful and mind-blowing it is and he’s telling me how great it is to see me so happy and that Erica is good for me and I must be good for her too, because she’s even been nice to him.  And he said that our happiness is thanks enough for his lesson.”  I sigh.  I thought I would break over this again, but by now it’s like the hundredth time you’ve watched “Shakespeare in Love” and Viola has to say goodbye to William and it’s awful, but by the hundredth time, you watch it and the tears don’t come.  
  
    “Callie…”  She’s whining now.  “Please don’t tell me that Erica heard?!  Oh, Sloan’s such an ass.”  
  
    “She was in the supply room we were at the doorway of!  Sloan walked away and I heard her drop a kit of some kind and I rushed in to see who it was and it was her, Addison, and there was glass and she was bleeding and her heart was bleeding out into her eyes and it was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen.  She wouldn’t let me help her, she went to Lexie Grey, one of the interns to look at her hand.  They are her cardio-goddess hands and she hates interns, let alone residents.  And she wouldn’t talk to me.  
  
    “I found her hours later in the basement.  I should have found her sooner, I should have known that she’d go to the basement.  I know that it’s the most depressing place ever and the best place to go when you feel like she must’ve been feeling.  
  
    “She told me she never wanted to see me again. She told me that she couldn’t believe that I would do this to her.  She cried and told me that she had never been so betrayed in her life.  She cried and told me that she had put herself all the way out there and she had received only a false hollow version of me.  
  
    “She cancelled all of her surgeries except the ones Yang can do. And she’s taken a leave of absence.”  
  
    The silence stretches.  
  
    “What do I do Addison?  What do I do?”  
  
    “Do you know what you want Callie?  Have you finally figured it out?  Are you sure and you’d stand on the street corner and shout it?    
  
     “Can you put her through this again if you aren’t sure?  If you aren’t sure that she’s the most important person to you on the planet and that you’d die for her or whatever they do in Hallmark movies, then don’t you go another step in this.    
  
     “Callie if you can’t be sure that you want Erica Hanh with every molecule of your body, then you have to leave her alone.”  She pauses for effect.  I only thought I was suffering before.  “If you are sure of what you want, then I can try to help you figure out how to talk to her again.  But if you aren’t sure and wouldn’t sign on the dotted line, then you need to suck it up and let her go because you’ve done enough damage!”  
  
     I can hear the anger in her voice and I know that she’s trying to be a good friend and I have laid the impossible on her.  I know that if it had been some other way around and she had done this somehow to someone else, then I would want to smack her in the head with the phone.  She’s letting me think about it too.  Timing.  She is not going to let me off the hook for this and she shouldn’t.  I do need to think about this.  It’s time to think instead of just fighting off my demons anyway I know how and reaching ot for her because the impulse strikes me.  How deep does this go for me?  
  
    She inhales loudly.  “You know, I had a patient a long time ago and George worked on it with me.” I can hear the smile in her words now.  She’s being gentle with me so that I get the point.  “It’s funny to think of now because I think he was trying to date you at the time.”  Now she giggles out loud.  “Anyway, the patient’s boyfriend said something about being in love and that `you’re either the ham or the eggs.’  It sounded odd, but he meant that you’re either committed like the ham—dead pig committed till death, or you’re not so committed like the eggs, which the chicken could take or leave.  So Callie, are you the ham or are you the eggs?”

 

 

**End**


End file.
